The move marks a new focus on providing a full Office experience on the Web.

When Microsoft first created its Office Web Apps, they were designed primarily as tools for reading and performing light editing of Office documents. That goal is now evolving, and the apps are growing into more fully featured Office experiences on the Web.

Today, the apps are receiving their first big update to achieve that goal with the addition of a feature that's long been a core of Google's App experience: real-time co-authoring. The Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Web Apps now all support simultaneous collaborative online editing. In Word and Excel, the co-editing is fine-grained, with per-character and per-cell granularity. PowerPoint is a little coarser, with per-slide granularity.

The apps also include a range of new editing facilities. Word has search-and-replace, support for headers and footers, and rich formatting of tables. The Excel Web App is adding the status bar quick analysis (sum, count, mean) feature found in the desktop app and is now compatible with protected sheets. Also, PowerPoint can now crop images online.

The next big thing that Microsoft intends to add to the apps is to enable editing on Android tablets.

The Office Web App update starts rolling out today and should be available to all Office Web App users, both through SkyDrive and Office 365, by the end of the week.

52 Reader Comments

Neither one, as much as I wish wasn't true, are capable of replacing a proper office suit... Yet.Until then I'll use Google docs for typing up rough drafts and libre office for formatting my final drafts.

It's amazing that the latest generation of the native Office desktop suite still doesn't have real-time collaboration as a standard, built-in feature. I keep thinking that maybe somebody needs to introduce the Office team to the folks at Microsoft who work on SignalR or something.

I'd be interested in knowing how many people are signing up for Office 365 and paying $100/year. I know my way around Office pretty well - well enough to know that most of its features are very niche, and that free web apps are more than sufficient 99.9% of the time. I imagine businesses still sign up for licenses, bu how many regular consumers find Office necessary enough to pay that much?

It's amazing that the latest generation of the native Office desktop suite still doesn't have real-time collaboration as a standard, built-in feature. I keep thinking that maybe somebody needs to introduce the Office team to the folks at Microsoft who work on SignalR or something.

The desktop version is meant to run without an Internet connection (even Office 365). Without any network connectivity, how would desktop users conduct real-time co-editing?

It's amazing that the latest generation of the native Office desktop suite still doesn't have real-time collaboration as a standard, built-in feature. I keep thinking that maybe somebody needs to introduce the Office team to the folks at Microsoft who work on SignalR or something.

The desktop version is meant to run without an Internet connection (even Office 365). Without any network connectivity, how would desktop users conduct real-time co-editing?

That's a poor excuse considering the same hooks in the system enable collaboration via (on-premise if you must) SharePoint. Real-time collaboration is desirable.

I'd be interested in knowing how many people are signing up for Office 365 and paying $100/year. I know my way around Office pretty well - well enough to know that most of its features are very niche, and that free web apps are more than sufficient 99.9% of the time. I imagine businesses still sign up for licenses, bu how many regular consumers find Office necessary enough to pay that much?

My business does, and every business in any field that edits Microsoft Word documents.

The total cost of a year's subscription to Office 365 is less than a single billable hour.

I'd be interested in knowing how many people are signing up for Office 365 and paying $100/year. I know my way around Office pretty well - well enough to know that most of its features are very niche, and that free web apps are more than sufficient 99.9% of the time. I imagine businesses still sign up for licenses, bu how many regular consumers find Office necessary enough to pay that much?

I am, but then I'm using it to learn Access among other things (even Publisher, ick). The extra 20g of SkyDrive is nice, too. Sadly, I've yet to run into a job I can get where Office experience is undesirable, or where Google Docs, LibreOffice, OpenOffice, even iWork is even an option. So, might as well pay, learn, and keep up to date without paying the $400+ to get a perpetual license.

At worst? I decide not to renew and go with something else. At best? When I finally get a tablet, I'll have Office there as well. Also got it on my Lumia

I'd be interested in knowing how many people are signing up for Office 365 and paying $100/year. I know my way around Office pretty well - well enough to know that most of its features are very niche, and that free web apps are more than sufficient 99.9% of the time. I imagine businesses still sign up for licenses, bu how many regular consumers find Office necessary enough to pay that much?

My business does, and every business in any field that edits Microsoft Word documents.

The total cost of a year's subscription to Office 365 is less than a single billable hour.

Didn't think about that. I figured that the subs made managing licenses easier, plus it was inexpensive to add /drop people as needed.

I'm still waiting for any online word processor to get the equivalent of MS Words outline view.Until then, working with long structured documents remains a desktop office task for me (libreoffice etc work fine (just fired up Libreoffice to make sure... it has a usable alternative in the 'navigator', but no actual outline view) as well).

I'd be interested in knowing how many people are signing up for Office 365 and paying $100/year. I know my way around Office pretty well - well enough to know that most of its features are very niche, and that free web apps are more than sufficient 99.9% of the time. I imagine businesses still sign up for licenses, bu how many regular consumers find Office necessary enough to pay that much?

I am, but then I'm using it to learn Access among other things (even Publisher, ick). The extra 20g of SkyDrive is nice, too. Sadly, I've yet to run into a job I can get where Office experience is undesirable, or where Google Docs, LibreOffice, OpenOffice, even iWork is even an option. So, might as well pay, learn, and keep up to date without paying the $400+ to get a perpetual license.

At worst? I decide not to renew and go with something else. At best? When I finally get a tablet, I'll have Office there as well. Also got it on my Lumia

That also gets you five licenses, which if you share with family is a total of $20/person/year. Much better than the perpetual as you said.

To everyone interested we tested the collaboration with Word 2010 (we don't have 2013) and it works but is somewhat limited. When editing starts on either side the whole paragraph appears locked on the other side. Changes made to the web are updated on some interval to the desktop version and changes made on the desktop are updated to the web version on save (of course there may be auto save). I would say that it is usable support although not as good as it should be. I wonder how things work with Office 2013.

Wow. I just use Office Web Apps' excel to edit my spreadsheet without knowing this. No wonder I lost at some point. So this is the cause. Previously, I had to click "Edit" menu to be able to edit the documents/spreadsheets/whatever. But just a moment ago, I forgot to find the edit button and directly edit my spreadsheet. After I finished editing, I realize that I forgot to find and click the edit menu and clueless upon how I can directly edit my spreadsheet. Very nice

That said, how long will it take for real-time collab to reach the desktop apps?

Moreover, Office365 and Google Apps, the paid versions from each vendor, are roughly equivalent in price, for various definitions of 'equivalent'. Office365 is available at a slightly lower cost without Office Web Apps, but real-time collaboration works so well for small, nimble teams, I suspect Microsoft will see better uptake for the plans that include the web apps now.

The benefits of real-time collaboration can be opaque to folks accustomed to working solo, but when they realize they can get short collaborations done in 20 minutes at their own desks instead of having to schedule a 60-minute meeting and lug around their laptops, the lights start coming on.

I can't help thinking that, to people who understand computation and information theory, these problems were completely solved over 30 years ago with TeX (or similar) and version control.

Unfortunately, instead of learning robust and provably correct tools, people keep reinventing the wheel in more and more convoluted ways.

I'm currently teaching an advanced university course on scientific writing (which involves a lot of back-and-forth edits among the students). I was amazed that it took some students about 3 weeks to understand what a "file" is, that their computer has folders/directories to organize their data, and that files come in different formats/types.

However, once that sort of linguisting/structural misunderstanding was overcome, the students mastered TeX, TikZ, and related tools in about another 3 weeks.

These are not dumb kids (all science majors) and most of them have used computers since they were small children, but in all the effort for desktop "user-friendliness", the fundamental workings of their tools are increasingly hidden, and they therefore become less discoverable. (The main problem in this case it that both Windows and MacOS hide part of the filename, and conflate file formats with applications.)

I maintain that what software designers call "user-friendly" is really "brain-unfriendly", because the building blocks are so deeply buried that non-experts cannot create an accurate mental model of the system's actual processes.

Now I realize this rant ultimately has very little to do with the story beyond a vague dissatisfaction with proprietary data formats, so I'll stop.

Decided to test this out really quick because I currently use a multi-device team working on the same folder of SkyDrive quite frequently and we've been experiencing a lot of syncing errors lately adversely affecting our work.

Basically, this sync ONLY serves to real-time the work flow in web apps. Which is a damn shame, because anyone working on word documents beyond simple processing knows that they need features in Word 2013 that aren't in the Web Apps (e.g. References, Citations, etc).

So I have four instances of the same documents open, two browser, 1 office 2013 and one office mobile. I can't save the office mobile document without everyone logging out, I can't see the additions of other people in the office 2013 without 'save-syncing' and the people in the web apps can't see my additions without forcing the document to save.

We're still flying blind until everyone forces a save and if my office 2013 can't save, it will start a new iteration of the file locally and then upload a newly named document to the skydrive folder. So the Web Apps people continue on without me and then we have 2...3...4... iterations building up.

Obviously this is a technology limitation, but it is killing our productivity as a team, we're almost as effective just e-mailing chunks to eachother or rotating writing.

It's amazing that the latest generation of the native Office desktop suite still doesn't have real-time collaboration as a standard, built-in feature. I keep thinking that maybe somebody needs to introduce the Office team to the folks at Microsoft who work on SignalR or something.

The desktop version is meant to run without an Internet connection (even Office 365). Without any network connectivity, how would desktop users conduct real-time co-editing?

That's a poor excuse considering the same hooks in the system enable collaboration via (on-premise if you must) SharePoint. Real-time collaboration is desirable.

Actually Office 2013 does. Office 2010 had a light weight version of it. You do need SharePoint to make it work.

I'm currently teaching an advanced university course on scientific writing (which involves a lot of back-and-forth edits among the students). I was amazed that it took some students about 3 weeks to understand what a "file" is, that their computer has folders/directories to organize their data, and that files come in different formats/types.

However, once that sort of linguisting/structural misunderstanding was overcome, the students mastered TeX, TikZ, and related tools in about another 3 weeks.

These are not dumb kids (all science majors) and most of them have used computers since they were small children, but in all the effort for desktop "user-friendliness", the fundamental workings of their tools are increasingly hidden, and they therefore become less discoverable. (The main problem in this case it that both Windows and MacOS hide part of the filename, and conflate file formats with applications.)

I maintain that what software designers call "user-friendly" is really "brain-unfriendly", because the building blocks are so deeply buried that non-experts cannot create an accurate mental model of the system's actual processes.

Now I realize this rant ultimately has very little to do with the story beyond a vague dissatisfaction with proprietary data formats, so I'll stop.

So you believe that everyone in the world who communicates with each other in a professional manner should be required to take a 3 week intensive course in scientific writing and format all documents from scratch?

You believe this is anything of a realistic solution to students having to unlearn before they learn TeX formatting?

I'd be interested in knowing how many people are signing up for Office 365 and paying $100/year. I know my way around Office pretty well - well enough to know that most of its features are very niche, and that free web apps are more than sufficient 99.9% of the time. I imagine businesses still sign up for licenses, bu how many regular consumers find Office necessary enough to pay that much?

I am, but then I'm using it to learn Access among other things (even Publisher, ick). The extra 20g of SkyDrive is nice, too. Sadly, I've yet to run into a job I can get where Office experience is undesirable, or where Google Docs, LibreOffice, OpenOffice, even iWork is even an option. So, might as well pay, learn, and keep up to date without paying the $400+ to get a perpetual license.

At worst? I decide not to renew and go with something else. At best? When I finally get a tablet, I'll have Office there as well. Also got it on my Lumia

I don't have Office on my tablet. Oh, I get it - you meant "Surface", not "tablet".

I'm currently teaching an advanced university course on scientific writing (which involves a lot of back-and-forth edits among the students). I was amazed that it took some students about 3 weeks to understand what a "file" is, that their computer has folders/directories to organize their data, and that files come in different formats/types.

However, once that sort of linguisting/structural misunderstanding was overcome, the students mastered TeX, TikZ, and related tools in about another 3 weeks.

These are not dumb kids (all science majors) and most of them have used computers since they were small children, but in all the effort for desktop "user-friendliness", the fundamental workings of their tools are increasingly hidden, and they therefore become less discoverable. (The main problem in this case it that both Windows and MacOS hide part of the filename, and conflate file formats with applications.)

I maintain that what software designers call "user-friendly" is really "brain-unfriendly", because the building blocks are so deeply buried that non-experts cannot create an accurate mental model of the system's actual processes.

Now I realize this rant ultimately has very little to do with the story beyond a vague dissatisfaction with proprietary data formats, so I'll stop.

So you believe that everyone in the world who communicates with each other in a professional manner should be required to take a 3 week intensive course in scientific writing and format all documents from scratch?

You believe this is anything of a realistic solution to students having to unlearn before they learn TeX formatting?

You can walk around your village all you like in your ignorance. Meanwhile, his students are riding their bicycles from village to village - and because you think learning to ride is a waste of time, you have no clue what you're missing. His students are doing things with TeX that you won't ever be able to do with Word. Now, if you have no need to go to other villages, or even care that they're there, fine. But don't belittle those who wish to go exploring.

You can walk around your village all you like in your ignorance. Meanwhile, his students are riding their bicycles from village to village - and because you think learning to ride is a waste of time, you have no clue what you're missing. His students are doing things with TeX that you won't ever be able to do with Word. Now, if you have no need to go to other villages, or even care that they're there, fine. But don't belittle those who wish to go exploring.

Demanding that the world never learn the dominant document exchange format because it may make them take a little longer to learn TeX is extremely willful ignorance, no matter how useful TeX is in specific contexts.

I'd be interested in knowing how many people are signing up for Office 365 and paying $100/year. I know my way around Office pretty well - well enough to know that most of its features are very niche, and that free web apps are more than sufficient 99.9% of the time. I imagine businesses still sign up for licenses, bu how many regular consumers find Office necessary enough to pay that much?

I am, but then I'm using it to learn Access among other things (even Publisher, ick). The extra 20g of SkyDrive is nice, too. Sadly, I've yet to run into a job I can get where Office experience is undesirable, or where Google Docs, LibreOffice, OpenOffice, even iWork is even an option. So, might as well pay, learn, and keep up to date without paying the $400+ to get a perpetual license.

At worst? I decide not to renew and go with something else. At best? When I finally get a tablet, I'll have Office there as well. Also got it on my Lumia

That also gets you five licenses, which if you share with family is a total of $20/person/year. Much better than the perpetual as you said.

I have MS Office 2007 at home. We have MS Office 2010 at work. Are there features in 2010 that I find useful? Yes. Are they enough to make me want to upgrade at home? No. If I went with the subscription I'd pay $100/year forever. Instead, I own MS Office 2007 forever and the only reason I will ever need to "upgrade" is if MS changes the file format (again) and I need to open someone else's files. Meanwhile, for my own work I use Libre Office because I can run it on virtually every platform in the house except Android - but MS Office doesn't run there either and probably never will. The few times I need to "share" documents in the cloud is when others force this on me, and so far it's always been Google Docs.

You can walk around your village all you like in your ignorance. Meanwhile, his students are riding their bicycles from village to village - and because you think learning to ride is a waste of time, you have no clue what you're missing. His students are doing things with TeX that you won't ever be able to do with Word. Now, if you have no need to go to other villages, or even care that they're there, fine. But don't belittle those who wish to go exploring.

Demanding that the world never learn the dominant document exchange format because it may make them take a little longer to learn TeX is extremely willful ignorance, no matter how useful TeX is in specific contexts.

Nobody's demanding you do anything, but you were condemning them for learning TeX.

Nobody's demanding you do anything, but you were condemning them for learning TeX.

I said nothing of the sort.

I find it strange that he's so focused on the "structural misunderstanding", science is no stranger to abstracting concepts, then teaching the real way to do things. Sure, Office is inefficient for formatting complexity, but someone with no concept of formatting documents is going to have a harder time than the need to unlearn.

Again, my point is that the majority of society is not going to handle TeX for all their editing needs, no matter whether they go with Office or Google docs.

Nobody's demanding you do anything, but you were condemning them for learning TeX.

I said nothing of the sort. I find it extremely useful.

I find it strange that he's so focused on the "structural misunderstanding", science is no stranger to abstracting concepts, then teaching the real way to do things. Sure, Office is inefficient for formatting complexity, but someone with no concept of formatting documents is going to have a harder time than the need to unlearn.

Again with the "unlearn". Where do you get this? Not once did Ads2 say "unlearn". What he said was that the current tools (Windows/Mac OS and MS Office) hide so much of the underlying tech that his students didn't even know what a file was.

Quote:

Again, my point is that the majority of society is not going to handle TeX for all their editing needs, no matter whether they go with Office or Google docs.

True, but that's not what you were saying. And nobody was saying that everyone should use TeX, Ads2 was simply pointing out that this whole formatting thing was solved years ago, long before MS Word even existed, which is true. What he didn't mention, and perhaps I'm reading too much into this, is that TeX is available on virtually every platform, while MS Word is only available on Windows and Mac PCs. Yes, Office Web Apps is available from just about any browser, but as several people have pointed out in this thread, it doesn't have all the features of desktop MS Office. I'm also pretty sure that, while it will run on Firefox on Linux, Microsoft probably doesn't support much more than Internet Explorer on Windows.